World farewells popular US president

KERRY O'BRIEN: He's the former Hollywood matinee star who went on to become one of America's most popular presidents and one of the notable leaders of the 20th Century.

Ronald Reagan, America's 40th president, will receive a full state funeral in Washington on Saturday, Australian time.

The two-term president had not been seen in public since he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease a decade ago.

Washington correspondent Jill Colgan looks back at the life and times of the man credited by many with leading the West to triumph in the Cold War with communism.

RONALD REAGAN, FORMER US PRESIDENT: Let history say of us, these were golden years, when the American revolution was reborn, when freedom gained new life and America reached for her best, and turned the tide of history away from totalitarian darkness, and into the warm sunlight of human freedom.

JILL COLGAN: American history, certainly as its written by his personal biographer, records Ronald Reagan as one of the country's greatest leaders.

RONALD REAGAN (1987): Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

EDMUND MORRIS, OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHER: Like all great presidents, he left the world 'different'.

There was no Soviet Union, well, at least not within a year of his departure.

There was no Berlin Wall and the United States had a rebirth of patriotism which lasts till this day, and a liberation of its business system, which is now spreading across the world.

So the revolution marches on.

RONALD REAGAN (IN A MOVIE ROLE): Tough luck, son.

I guess we can't all have charm and good looks too.

JILL COLGAN: Ronald Reagan's opponents often claimed it was good looks and charm alone that took him from a poor home in a mid-western town all the way to stardom in Hollywood, to marriage to his glamorous, wealthy second wife Nancy Davis and, through her contacts, got him the governorship of California in the 1960s.

KEVIN PHILLIPS, POLITICAL ANALYST: Ronald Reagan is the last cowboy.

You know we don't breed them on the frontier anymore, you have to get them off the lot at Hollywood.

And, basically, that's where we got him.

JILL COLGAN: But from his high school days, Reagan was an active politician - in the '30s and '40s, a left-wing supporter of Democrat presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

His political conversion to the right began in 1946 when, as President of the Screen Actors Guild, he was asked to arbitrate in a bitter dispute between two unions, one of which was led by communists.

EDMUND MORRIS: It was so violent that he was threatened, himself, with mutilation, acid in his face, house burning.

Now, the threat of acid in the face is something that an actor registers, and that, overnight, changed him from an extremely left-wing liberal Democrat into the familiar anti-communist warrior that we remember him as.

RONALD REAGAN (1946): Let's for a moment forget the word 'communist' and 'communism'.

Let's substitute the proper term - 'pro-Russian'.

RONALD REAGAN (1980): I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully...

JILL COLGAN: When he was sworn in as president, conservatives celebrated the arrival of a man they saw as a real leader in the White House.

His brand of economics brought upheaval to Washington.

'Reagan-onomics' targeted big Government, calling for cuts to taxes and to welfare spending, policies considered radical for their time.

RONALD REAGAN: I know now there is no program or promise that a president can give, that a Federal Government can then come in and wave a wand and do this!

JILL COLGAN: The '80s boom followed, but at a huge price.

The President who came to office promising to balance the Federal budget governed for two terms on borrowed money.

Ronald Reagan's defenders claim much of the borrowed money was used to bring down Communism.

RONALD REAGAN: While they preach the supremacy of the State, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.

JILL COLGAN: In the face of massive demonstrations from Sydney to Bonn and New York too, he re-armed the West.

New submarines and carriers, new long-range missiles, new intermediate missiles in Europe and his much-vaunted Star Wars, an incredibly ambitious and expensive anti-missile shield.

RONALD REAGAN (1983): Let me share with you a vision of a future which offers hope.

It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive.

JILL COLGAN: When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the Soviet Union to compete in this new hi-tech arena, it triggered the collapse of the Soviet empire.

EDMUND MORRIS: Look, we all know the Soviet Union was a rotten system, but rotten structures often stand for decades until they're shaken, and what Reagan did was shake the structure.

JILL COLGAN: Initially, the two leaders held each other at arm's length.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, FORMER SOVIET LEADER (TRANSLATION): We went off with our separate delegations and I said, "He's a real dinosaur."

And he described me as a hard-headed Communist or a Bolshevik.

JILL COLGAN: But the pair formed a friendship that helped steer the changing course of history.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (TRANSLATION): My aide called and told me and I immediately thought, "Another person has left this world, left behind a giant footprint".

And I thought, probably, this is a relief for him, 10 hard years for him -- it's a very difficult fate.

But there's one gift nobody denies he possessed, the ability to make America feel good about itself.

EDMUND MORRIS: He represented, I think, the best of the American ethos in that he was positive, optimistic, patriotic, individualistic.

In those respects he represented us, he was us and I'm speaking as an American now, despite my accent.

JILL COLGAN: With his wife Nancy at his side to the very end, the optimistic patriot has left a lasting memory in the minds of Americans who mourn him.

RONALD REAGAN: Let us resolve they will say of our day and of our generation that we did keep faith with our god, that we did act worthy of ourselves that we did protect and pass on lovingly that shining city on a hill.